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‘The Bracelet of Khepri’

Thomas Henry William Muir Longmore Mawson

Holwell Comyns Birch (1898-1998)

The Rear Garden of the ‘Old Luxor Hotel’, circa early 1900s

“The garden at the Luxor hotel is a delectable place of palms. Sixty to
eighty feet high they stand, slender, slim, and dusky-stemmed, and high

up at the top of the trees stretch the glorious fem like fronds of foliage

beneath which hang the clusters of yellowing dates. Here rises a thicket

of bamboos, tremulous and quivering even on the stillest and most
windless nights…Over trellis-work foam pink cascades of bougainvillea,

gorgeous scarlet creepers and hibiscus shoot wayward flames through

the dark-green foliage, and the scent of hundreds of roses is thick in the

air.” 1.1
Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940)

© A. A. Aziz 2019 5